Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

Just this morning in our Saturday audio club meet we demoed 4 dacs (all Chinese designed and manufactured), the Denafrips Venus, Musetec mh005, Gustard r26 and the Martix aAudio X Sabre. There were a total of 8 people in attendance , all assigning scores from 1-4 to each dac after a 3 minute sampler of various music styles including female vocals, electronica, rock , classical and r&b. The scroes were tabulated and the winner was more of a surprise to me given that 6 out of the 8, me included , all selected the same dac ast the top performer. Before we get to the final breakdown , it must be noted in attendance were some very seasoned audiophiles. owning reference dacs from the likes of DCS, MSB, Vermeer , TotalDac and Esoteric to make but a few.

Onto the final results

1. Gustard r26, again 6 out the 8 voted it the winner. Legitimately, sounds to me more like a $5k dac and even beyond. Fast and resolving , accurate and transparent sound .......a r2r dac performing more like a delta sigma all for $1600 .....boggles the mind how they got this dac just so right in all the ways that matter.

2. Denafrips Venus, the other 2 people both voted number one for this dac. It was my choice for second best dac on the day. Trademark Denafrips sound , while more daring and forward focused in presentation. Midrange is where this dac really shines.

3. Musetec mh005, just one point in all separated the Musetec from the last place Matrix X Sabre. While perfectly adequate in most every aspect, nothing really stands out as exceptional with this dac. Seems like a dated design. One other attendee stated "a throwback design in not just aesthetics but also sonics. Fair to say the least aesthetically appealing of all 4 dacs.

4. Matrix X Sabre, the guys at Matrix need to refine this D/S dac further. Most in attendance agreed to tiring faster of the most digital sounding dac of the bunch.

It is important to add nobody in attendance has/had an affiliation or shared any financial interests or vested interests of any manner with any of the dac manufacturers whose products were featured in this shootout.

@chaseton

interesting result you are reporting... please tell more about how the digital feed was managed, what the rest of the system was etc etc... with dac testing and comparisons, how the streamed music input is handled matters alot

fwiw, i bought a nice used r26 just to try it, see what the fuss is about, and i would agree that for the $ it is absurdly good... particularly from the lan input (i am a roon user) - i have confidently poo-pooed the chifi brands since i started my dac journey at the start of covid, especially those from the guangzhou/shenzhen factory alley (smsl, gustard, topping, singxer, matrix and so on...) but this r26 is pretty amazing... with an effective built in streamer too...

@jjss49  Correct on the Gustard r26. One takeaway from today"s audio meet up was the discussion we had on the shockingly good QPR with the r26. Credit goes where it is due in that respect. Currently, now with Chifi (as you call it) confidence at its highest, we may be seeing Chinese designed and made audio products to genuinely rival their Western counterparts. Easily seen in the lower to mid price tiers , although not as of yet, if ever, who really knows, in the high end and ultra high end brackets. 

In terms of the audio setup used in the test :

Magico A5 speakers , Innous Zen mk3 server, Pass labs xp 22 pre amp , Classe Delta monos , AQ Robin Hood speaker cable and Earth interconnects (balanced)

Thank you mod staff for removing the rather offensive , hate charged and genuinely hostile reply from a member, whose name will remain unpublicized.